


Taking Stock

by steveelotaku



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Some Humor, Some angst, The Transformers: Lost Light, The Transformers: More Than Meets the Eye (IDW)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 17:17:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20100817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steveelotaku/pseuds/steveelotaku
Summary: Megatron sits in his quarters, taking stock....No, not brooding. Megatron does -not- brood.





	Taking Stock

The captain’s quarters of a ship are rarely inviting places—especially when they are little more than a gilded jail cell.

Megatron of Tarn knew this well, and as he sat at his desk pondering the _Lost Light’s _current course (high jinks and mild peril), he realized that for the first time, the room was no longer his prison. Of course, there was the small matter of never really being able to go back to Cybertron, but he had no real desire to return.

He ran a steel hand across the back of his chair, staring out into an endless void of stars and nebulae—taking stock, he supposed, of the situation. Rodimus would insinuate he was brooding, but Megatron of Tarn did not simply _brood_. Anyone who at any point had earned the title of “Lord” never simply _brooded. _

He tapped a button on his desk’s console, after some minutes.

“Megatron to Rodimus. Come in, Rodimus.”

After a moment, a hologram of Rodimus’s head popped up.

“You rang, Megatron?”

A tired sigh escaped Megatron’s voice box.

“Yes, Rodimus…I suppose I did. Anything to report?”

“Well, Whirl’s in the brig for right now, something about a drunken gunfight in Swerve’s with Brainstorm. Apparently, the ‘son of a bitch had it coming’ and ‘he knows what he did.’ I decided not to get into it, but I have a feeling Brainstorm’s latest invention had something to do with it. Something called a ‘Inter-Dimensional Wave Rebooter.’ Apparently, Swerve got his hands on it and Brainstorm saw his own death or something, which Swerve laughed about until Brainstorm pointed out he didn’t even seem to exist in this alternate timeline and ow…quantum theory makes my processor hurt.”

An even deeper sigh echoed through the confines of the captain’s quarters.

“Is Whirl calmer now?”

“Well, Minimus Ambus is handling the situation. Threatened to read Whirl the Autobot Code, unabridged, _slowly_, if he didn’t calm down. Whirl is now sitting and amiably having a drink with him.”

“I thought he was supposed to be in the brig? Since when do we have drinks down there?”

“Trust me, Megatron…anywhere is the brig when Minimus is serving the drinks. Watered-down energon worse than _Swerve’s_.”

“I can only imagine. Well, if that is all, Rodimus, I’m retiring to my quarters. If there’s any matters for my attention, they can wait until I’ve had a proper rest.”

“Reading you loud and clear, Megs. I’ll handle whatever’s immediate and I’m sure Minimus can handle what’s left. Rodimus out.”

As Megatron shut off the coms, he sat back in his chair. He supposed there was a certain charming insouciance to Rodimus’s manner, as unprofessional as it was. It beat most of the Decepticons, at any rate. Soundwave was good company, certainly—but the vast majority of his cause had hardly been conversationalists. Shockwave could talk for hours on end, but the bot’s dedication to cold logic had left him more than unsettled on more than one occasion.

The less said about Starscream, the better.

He sighed, for the third time that evening. It was difficult, he supposed, to reconcile it all. It never seemed to make sense as any kind of life, the one he’d lived. It felt almost more like some serial holo-drama, some needlessly dramatic exercise dedicated solely to enforcing a black and white moral paradigm and hawk toys to unsuspecting sparklings. Megatron, Evil Decepticon Commander, leading the charge to oppress the heroic Autobots and Optimus Prime. And he supposed, on some level, the drama wouldn’t be inaccurate.

But how had he _gotten _there? Of course, there’d been the police brutality. The theocracy. The gladiatorial career leading him through legions of the bitter working class, desperate to destroy _something_.

There’d been, of course, his poet career. Reading after reading in dive bars, oil houses, the rooms of long-forgotten bots’ suites. Romances, long-forgotten. Affairs, passionate, brief, but the remains lingering long after—

The image of Starscream flickered through his processor before he dispelled it.

They had always asked him why he kept _Starscream _around, and he never had an answer. It had gone bad, long ago. Every bit of that relationship, whatever it was now, had become pure _poison_. And yet, he had kept the Seeker Captain around, refusing to let go of what they had once been.

Perhaps, he supposed, Starscream had been the Decepticon cause, more than any other bot. The very idea of loyalty to a cause would have _horrified _Starscream, he knew, but Starscream, in spite of his treachery, _was _a loyal Decepticon. He had taught that Cybertronians were superior beings with no need to bow to anyone, and Starscream had taken that to its logical extreme.

He was the sort to throw down with the gods and demand reparations.

He was also an insufferable little wretch whose sycophantic hypocrisies hardly made up for his skill in battle…and in other areas. 

Megatron looked at his bookshelf, wistfully. It was full of Autobot regulations, ship’s manuals, and of course, his old poetry. There were several editions of _Towards Peace_, including the first and final editions. _After the Ark _was there, too, but he rarely read it—it was too painful to recall some of that youthful optimism, as much as he despised his past tyrannical cynicism.

Now, though, he was free of all law, all war, all history.

The universe was a blank canvas, an empty page.

Perhaps it was time, then, for him to write again.

“Computer,” he spoke, calmly. “Begin recording. Authorization, Megatron of Tarn, command code 19842012.”

“Recording,” a soft, mechanical voice stated.

“It has been scarcely more than a year since the end of the Great War. Cybertron stands on the precipice of a new frontier, and for once, I am not at the forefront of its fate. I could not be happier. I am many, many light-years from Cybertron, now. Perhaps it is for the best.”

He paused, his optics twitching for an almost imperceptible moment.

“I am the co-captain of the starship _Lost Light_, and alongside Rodimus, I am exploring strange new reaches of the galaxy. When I had begun my conquests of the universe, millennia ago, I had scarcely dreamed of the infinite tapestry of worlds and life-forms out beyond the industrial sprawl of Cybertron’s cities. I come here now, not as a warmonger or tyrant, but as a wanderer. I am free of my cell, free of the heavy sentence which should, by all legal merit, come down upon my head and end what little remains of my life.”

Turning to look at the stars, he swallowed hard.

“I cannot say if I have made the right choice. It is not in my power to say so. For eons, I have prided myself on the ability to choose my own destiny, to forge my own path. I told myself that only Primus could judge me, if he existed. That the Guiding Hand was welcome to its own thoughts, and they could keep them to themselves. I met the Guiding Hand. My _therapist _was…”

Infuriatingly, the memories wouldn’t come.

“A good bot named Ring, I suppose…his name always eluded me. I feel as if I have been dreaming, but I do recall…meeting the Guiding Hand. Realizing, on some level, they were just as flawed as I was. I have met the gods, and they are us. They are lost, they are dead, as so many of us are now. Still, Rang, or whatever his name was…I feel he believed in me. Can’t Imagine why.”

Taking a bottle of energon from the top shelf of his cabinet, he poured himself a glass and sipped it idly.

“I do not know who will hear this, or read its transcript, if anyone at all. Maybe these words will fall on the deaf ears of a galaxy ended. Perhaps only the beings beyond our comprehension, the ones who forged even the gods themselves, if they exist, will be able to comprehend what I set down here. Even I, myself, do not know what I am writing.”

The last drops of energon dried up, after a few sips, and Megatron gingerly sat the glass down on his desk.

“Let this work be titled _The Last Voyage_. It will be a long work. It will be the last one I ever write, I suppose. I am old, now, older than I care to think—and our dead have been buried long ago, now. The days of me walking among murderers, soldiers, and holy men are gone—now, I walk only among friends, pilgrims in this last voyage among the stars. Where it goes, I cannot say. Where it ends, I may never know—but I can only hope that this log reaches someone who needs it most. Let it reach an artist. Let it reach a young soldier. Let it reach someone who needs to know that the world does not always end in gunfire and the death of ideals.”

Megatron turned out the light.

“It ends with love,” he said, lying down on his recharge slab. “Computer, pause recording. We’ll take this up again tomorrow.”

“Log saved, Captain Megatron. Is there anything else you wish to do?”

Megatron gave no answer—he had already fallen asleep.


End file.
